Ezra mastered his fear of the wobble board! It's the little things. He still isn't quite on the boat in terms of understanding why, but he's starting to understand that doing things = food and praise! A couple stantion wraps, lots of recalling to heel, ran through a barrel, walked the plank and did some ladder work. All in all, he had a fantastic first day. He's interesting to work with because he's so.. mellow. It's difficult to get him excited about much. Kind of his personality, though.

Mimi was a superstar. Love this dog. Also, I like threadles. Lesson of the day is she demotivates easily (270*, certain wrap scenarios) and loses any oomph she has if I stop moving or decelerate too much. If I run her correctly, she does awesome. She's still a green dog, and I'm a green handler, but I'd say she's a fantastic shade of green. After Ezra's class we did a couple run throughs with weaves (straight!). Once she gets tired, she'll pop the 10th pole every once and a while, but I'm not in a position to be worried. Starting on entries, though I'm not going to push her. She doesn't care for repetitive work, particularly when she gets it wrong I'm all for taking it slow!

Working on Dave Munnings foundation exercises with P to improve our teamwork and control. The anti-blind cross exercise is going to be a big one. Payton is not big on the teamwork and very big on the just barrel around the course taking whatever might be in his path.

Well, we did a few of the easier exercises that I've done before that I know P can do, then set up the anti-blind cross. The first time we tried it, he blind crossed me and went to his toy. I took him back and set it up again. This time when I released him, he moved... then stopped and thought. And looked at me and then back at the toy. Then thought some more. And then.
AND THEN.
He came straight to me!!!

YES! CORRECT ANSWER! BIG PARTY! AWESOME TUGGING!

And then we stopped playing because I thought that was sooo big.
There's still hope for the crazy baby yet.

Is there any issue with running Summer at 4" in TDAA? The way im reading it she will be a veteran so will get a height drop. Not sure if you choose to drop them or if they just automatically do. She's running 8" everywhere else.

I signed both girls up for a class since it's so hard to get training in this time of year. Mira's is a master skills class with an emphasis on creative handling solutions and really pushing your dog and yourself for speed and to expand skill sets. It's a lot of fun and Mira was super fantastic.

Kim is in a class right after that I entered mostly because it was, well, right after the class I wanted to take with Mira. It's mostly about weave proofing but they were using open channels. And I do mean *open* -- Kim barely had to "weave" at all much less work her striding. Since her main problem is not wanting to collect to get into the poles and instead taking the second, third, fourth entry, this was probably not terribly helpful. Judging by the other class participants, most of us weren't expecting open weaves but there was one who very loudly wanted them. Ironically she has a toy breed so at that width she had inches of clearance off each shoulder as she ran down the middle. But we did successfully ask to close the weaves for the last drill since 90% of the class is trialing in Excellent or Masters this weekend.

But! In happy news, Kim gave me over an hour of unbroken engagement and focus. Madness! I couldn't put her up because of the class structure which had a line of dogs in the ring waiting (which resulted in a dogfight...) and I tried to give her "off duty" time between exercises but she kept staring at me and offering to do things. My little ditzhund is growing up *sniff*

Yay Kim!!! I love when they have those types of moments - makes all the hard work worth it.

So it's about that time in Jari's life when he decides he doesn't need to listen to me. Sigh. Back to more frequent rewards and more recall games outside. He's recalling just fine in terms of when my instructor and I are talking and he goes off to do his own thing for a minute or so, but I will release him, say, in front of a jump, and he will sometimes now go, "Oh yeah I see what you're doing there, but there's something over here that's WAAAAY exciting K BYE." But then there will be longer stretches of our half hour private where he is AWESOME and will do anything and everything (including some blind and rear crosses today which amazed me). I guess I will take it, and it's not like Kimma was at this age where she would go off to sniff and just NOT come back ever. But still. I thought maybe he wouldn't do these things hahaha. Just gotta stay on top of him a bit more

And Kimma and I have our very first seminar this weekend! It's a full day one about the One Mind Dog method. Should be interesting! She's been doing TONS better and has gotten her speed up to where it used to be (meaning I'm BEAT after running like half a course LOL). I'm excited to get her going for this coming trial season, and to learn with her.

Is there any issue with running Summer at 4" in TDAA? The way im reading it she will be a veteran so will get a height drop. Not sure if you choose to drop them or if they just automatically do. She's running 8" everywhere else.

I am so glad I dropped Lucy from 16" to 12". There's no reason to jump higher than you have to, imo...especially with an older dog. Lucy is happier at the end of the day now, even after 6 runs. If for some reason I am running an event where she still has to jump 16" (there were a few USDAA runs for a while where she hadn't measured under yet), I just make sure to practice at 16" the week before. She hasn't had any trouble switching back and forth.

I have to fill out the premiums differently for USDAA and NADAC. I would assume there's a box to check for TDAA too, saying you want her to jump 4.

We had a really good class last night. Watson didn't leave me at all. Even when we botched something and had to stop and reset, he stuck right with me instead of getting distracted and running off. Very happy with how quickly he's decided that playing with me is more interesting than other dogs. We did flatwork stuff while waiting our turn and he was much more engaged and focused on me and wanted to perform behaviors, vs trying to lunge at other dogs or pee on things. Maybe he's maturing? Or maybe he just enjoys agility more than previous obedience classes?

The only bad thing about agility is that the dirt from the arena gets smashed into his feet. Usually it's fine, but last night he was licking his paws before bed, which turned the dirt to mud, and then he smeared it all over the carpet in artistic patterns. Awesome.